Earlier today, I noted that Michele Bachmann finally scored points on Rick Perry by hitting him on his ties to Merck and linking that to the Gardasil mandate Perry imposed through executive order in Texas. This is a fair point on Perrys record, even given his apology for pursuing the mandate through EO instead of through the legislature, and its not surprising that Bachmann was the candidate to first take advantage of the opening. (Mitt Romney passed a mandate on health insurance for all citizens of Massachusetts, which pretty much puts this issue out of reach for him.) However, Bachmann took a winning argument about the method and the wisdom of mandating a vaccination for a limited-spread virus and turned it into an anti-vaccination argument, especially in this post-debate argument on Fox with Greta van Susteren.

>>>"Theres a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine."<<<

Huh? Mental retardation typically takes place in a pre- or neo-natal event. Autism becomes apparent in the first couple of years of life  and primarily affects boys. Gardasil vaccinations take place among girls between 9-12 years of age. Even assuming that this anecdote is arguably true, it wouldnt be either mental retardation or autism, but brain damage.

The FDA has received no reports of brain damage as a result of HPV vaccines Gardasil and Cervarix. Among the reports that correlate seriously adverse reactions to either, the FDA lists blood clots, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and 68 deaths during the entire run of the drugs. The FDA found no causal connection to any of these serious adverse events and found plenty of contributing factors to all  and all of the events are exceedingly rare.

The mental retardation argument is a rehash of the thoroughly discredited notion that vaccines containing thimerasol caused a rapid increase in diagnosed autism cases. That started with a badly-botched report in Lancet that allowed one researcher to manipulate a ridiculously small sample of twelve cases in order to reach far-sweeping conclusions about thimerasol. That preservative hasnt been included in vaccines for years, at least not in the US, and the rate of autism diagnoses remain unchanged.

The most charitable analysis that can be offered in this case for Bachmann is that she got duped into repeating a vaccine-scare urban legend on national television. It looks more like Bachmann sensed that she had won a point and wanted to go in for the kill, didnt bother to check the facts, and didnt care that she was stoking an anti-vaccination paranoid conspiracy theory, either. Neither shines a particularly favorable light on Bachmann.

Rick Santorum took the correct position on the Gardasil issue. We mandate certain vaccines in children because we mandate children be gathered for educational purposes for many years (in private or public schools), and certain diseases are easily communicable in those settings. By mandating vaccinations against whooping cough, measles, and mumps, we are protecting children who would otherwise get exposed without any action on their part except compliance with the law. Thats not true with HPV, and parents should decide for themselves whether to inoculate their sons and daughters with Gardasil or Cervarix. If Perry wanted to make those inoculations more accessible, he could have crafted an opt-in system rather than forcing parents to opt out.

Im afraid she lost it for me with that remark. Its amazing to me that - as stupid as politicians of both sides are on most matters of importance - they are even more vapid when it comes to anything concerning science.

I'm with ya. I've always liked Michele, but lately she's been proving to me that she's a little crazy. Maybe this accounts for her legendary problem keeping staff.

“Im afraid she lost it for me with that remark. Its amazing to me that - as stupid as politicians of both sides are on most matters of importance - they are even more vapid when it comes to anything concerning science.”

>>Because you understood wrong. The opt out had to be by filling in a governemnt form, all things correct, filled out every two years, and many private schools refused to accept the opt-out program, placing parents of those schools in a pickle.<<

Plus it puts the parents on a government list that could be abused by Child Protective Services.

Ignorance may be part of her supposedly “extreme” position, and maybe the best data shows that the things she’s waging a scare campaign about aren’t anywhere near as common as she makes out — but I can’t say she’s any more ignorant than Perry was when he promulgated that turkey.

I missed a good many of the vaccines that most kids were getting in the 60s and 70s. The reason I missed them is because I had a spleen issue as a child that the docs really couldn’t decipher. As a result they told my parents that they could opt out of most vaccinations and I was given some kind of waiver for school.

48 years later and I’m still pestilence free.

58
posted on 09/13/2011 8:38:43 AM PDT
by cripplecreek
(A vote for Amnesty is a vote for a Permenant Democrat majority. ..Choose well.)

>>>"Theres a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine. She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result of that vaccine."<<<

Anectodes are never evidence. Groan. Still, this was a clear example of crony capitalism by Perry.

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